Everywhere I go, everything I hear, everything I see is telling me to give up time with family and friends Thursday and go "BUY! BUY! You have to buy! Christmas is coming. BUY!""Don't think about Thanksgiving," they say. “Black Friday begins on Thursday!”
Let me answer that absurd statement: "I'm sorry, but no. Your sale begins on Thursday. Friday can only begin on Friday. As powerful as you Big Box retailers are, you do not control the calendar. Stop it."
Besides, Thanksgiving was originally set aside for us Americans to reflect on our blessings of families, friends, and food, not as a kick-off to the Christmas shopping season. Apparently that thought has disappeared from many corporate boardrooms Values once focused on simple retail sales have morphed into materialistic greed-mongering.
It makes me sad and desperate for reassuring words.
Today, though, I'm thankful for books. One in particular. Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
I remembered a long-forgotten instructor quoting it as inspiration for readers everywhere: "A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any work of art. It is the work of art closest to life itself.”
It took many years and a Robin Williams movie to actually read the book, however.
In Dead Poets Society, John Keating (Williams) returns to his prep school as an English teacher. As a student he and his friends created a secret fraternity dedicated to reading the works of great poets and philosophers.
At each meeting they read Thoreau’s words: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived …. to suck out all the marrow of life …”
The movie had me scouring the bookstores to find Walden. In it I found Thoreau espousing some the most profound thoughts ever written.
In case you are unfamiliar with the book and its origin, in 1847 in an effort to confront the essentials in life, Thoreau retreated to a cabin in the Massachusetts woods, determined to live completely on his own. One can argue that since his experience was short-lived, his observations are inconsequential.
To an extent, that is a valid criticism, yet the conclusions he reached and shared are still vivid and instructive. Their truth is an example of when the words written are more important than the life of the one who wrote them.
The truth Thoreau discovered is valuable for not only his 19th century, but for today. One observation says much about the human condition: “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? … Our life is frittered away by detail.”
A 170 years ago and today.
Instinctively, I believe, the modern world knows this, yet advertising insists on cluttering our lives with the desire for more material, more stress, more detail, more garbage. Unfortunately, the merchandise advertised is not what humans need to survive. At best, it is merely diversion.
Thoreau found the same thing in his age when writing Walden. He wrote, “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind.”
He went on to say, “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.”
The fact that the same thing can be said today begs the question: "What the heck is happening?"
Deja vu, maybe?
Observe the ads today. See what the box stores want you to buy. Is there anything that you or the people you buy for really need? Really? The televisions, the computers, the designers clothes, etc., are all fun, cool, and spiffy to have, but are they necessary?
There is always the argument that if you have the money, if you’re rich enough, what’s the harm?
Nothing, in and of itself.
Unfortunately, today, as in Thoreau's time, too many people purchase not simply from need, but for reasons of conformity, image, and desire. Before they are even aware of the fact, the customers' possessions and the debt they bring overwhelm and own the unwitting buyers. As Thoreau put it, “… men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”
"But I want to be rich," some say. "And if I can't be rich, I at least want to look rich."
Which begs an even bigger question, "What is rich?"
Well, Thoreau had an answer for that, too: “… a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
This seems like a counter-intuitive concept, but basically he is saying that the less you want, the more you have. I like that idea.
So if we accept Thoreau’s concept, how do we live it? He told us succinctly, and the older I get, the more I believe the man was a genius: “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand …. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.”
How do we do that? Eschew the rantings of advertisers and latch firmly onto the essentials of life. Deny those who would take you away from family, friends and food on Thanksgiving. Love others and let go of the commercialism around you. Thoreau-ify your life by getting back to the simple things and giving thanks for them.
One really simple idea? Read a book. Maybe just for fun, write one. But no stress.
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